Insistent Assistant 36 (Patreon)

Insistent Assistant

Chapter 36

-VB-

Miss Wednesday (Nefertari Vivi in disguise)

When she climbed up from the lower decks to the surface, Miss Wednesday made her way to the wheel where her frie- colleagues were, one manning the wheel itself and the other looking over their stern at the rapidly approaching pair of ships.

And from the flags they flew, they were not pirates.

“Bounty hunters think that they can take on Baroque Works?” she asked.

“What can we do but laugh at their foolishness?” Mr. 9 yawned. “South Blue may be one of the hardier Blues but it is, in the end, still not the Grand Line. They will not be expecting our strength.”

Miss Monday hummed. “We will win. We simply have to make sure that we use our strength precisely when it is required and not flounder with posturing.”

“Oh, is that a dig at me, Miss Monday?! How could you~!” Mr. 9, the crown-wearing royalty-wannabe, dramatically swayed.

Vivi chuckled at her frie- colleague’s antics.

“So do we have a plan?”

“It’s three ships versus two,” Miss Monday hummed. “We should just pound them.”

“Yes, dear, but two of our three ships are schooners,” Mr. 9 reminded the brawny woman. “And their two ships look like they have at least one galleon.”

Miss Wednesday frowned. A war galleon typically had forty cannons. If the pursuing bounty hunters (or pirates) didn’t have that many to prioritze speed over firepower, then they would have somewhere around twenty to thirty cannons.

But speed was also something pirates like Baroque Works preferred, and the two brigs escorting their new prize - a Marine sea stone-lined battleship - also had fewer cannons than they should. War brigs carried up to twenty cannons. However, their brigs, in their pursuit of speed, had only a dozen cannons. Evne then, all of their cannons were of the smaller calibers.

Worse, the cannons on this battleship were nonfunctional due to a lack of cannonballs that fit their bore sizes.

“We have to get in close for a fight,” she advised. “Galleons will be able to shred us from a distance.”

Mr. 9 nodded in agreement. “Let the brigs catch them and we slowly lumber in?” he asked.

Miss Monday shrugged. “Sounds good to me,” she replied as she slowly began to turn the ship around. Then she took a deep breath in and looked up to the crow’s nest, where Mr. 9 had been previously but was now replaced by a proper crewmate. “Signal the brigs to go on the attack!”

Vivi watched as the two lighter ships made a swift turn (for ships), causing their main mast to tilt around fifteen degrees. Fifteen degrees was a very steep turn for brigs. That kind of turns in the brigs told her that the navigators or the captains of those ships made very fast and loose decisions with their ships and crews. Vivi didn’t like that, and once they returned back to base, she was going to ensure that they got demoted.

… Oh wait, she’s trying to infiltrate the Baroque Works and break it from within. She’s supposed to be making it easier for the pirate crew to fall apart.

“Those captains seem very experienced with their ships to make such steep turns,” she spoke up instead, praising the captains.

“Yes, those two have supposedly been with Baroque Works for quite a while, even longer than we have been,” Mr. 9 hummed in agreement. “I wonder if they are willing to work with me more directly. We could use navigators with guts like that.”

“I’m going to let the winds take us,” Miss Monday spoke up. “... Why isn’t Karoo up here with us?”

“He’s a land duck, not a sea duck.”

“He’s a duck,” Miss Monday looked shocked.

“He can’t fly.”

“He’s too thick for that?!”

QWACK!

Vivi tittered when she heard Karoo’s indignant squawk from below the deck. Her friend must have heard Miss Monday’s comment.

As the minutes ticked by, they closed the distance between them and their pursuers. The brigs that had gone ahead lined themselves up for staggered broadsides on the enemy’s galleon’s port side. Instead of sandwiching the enemy between them, they would only strike at one side of the ship as to reduce the total firepower they could deploy at once. They would do that while in a line, which allowed them to pass by quickly and thus suffer less damage. It also forced the enemy to hold some of their cannon fire to damage the second ship or suffer not damaging the second ship at all.

Vivi watched … and frowned.

“They’re not slowing down,” she commented. When ships went to battle, it was often normal for ships to slow down so that the cannon gunners could better aim their cannons. Otherwise, the chopping seas will send the ship rocking up and down while also making detailed maneuvers extremely difficult. Fast galleon was a galleon too slow to turn to use their broadsides effectively.

So why…?

Her eyes shot open. “They’re heading straight for us!” she shouted in utter disbelief.

Then explosion.

Broadsides erupted from the first of their brigs and the enemy galleon.

And then the enemy brig came right up behind the galleon’s wake and fired upon the first brig.

Their second brig attempted a broadside but fighters from the galleon boarded the ship and soon, the top deck of the brig was a bloody skirmish. Less than a third of the cannons fired and those were all from the gun deck below the main deck. There were bursts of fire that couldn’t be from guns. They were more like streams of fire than a burst of gunfire. One of the boarders wove through the crew like a scythe through wheat stalks.

Then those same fighters jumped back on the galleon before they passed by.

Half a minute.

That’s all it took for their pursuers to board a brig, kill Billions and Millions aboard, and then reboard their ship.

Mr. 9 and Miss Monday understood just as quickly as they did that they weren’t fighting some random nobodies.

-VB-

Alan Marris

I swung my axes down, and some of the blood on my axes flung down and sprayed the deck.

The brig that we boarded was now on fire, and if the survivors there didn’t put out the fire quickly enough, then the fire would reach the powder kegs and explode.

But I ignored the ship on fire as I turned my focus onto the Marine battleship that … hadn’t fired any of its guns, including the big fuck-off double cannon at the front.

Did they … not have the cannonballs?

Shrugging my shoulders, I turned to Azula.

“You good?” I asked her.

The Servant with the Fire Nation princess’s ego snarled. “You think a small engagement like that is enough to put me off?” she asked with a drawl. “Oh, please. Maybe I should change back to Thorkell and really show you some serious fights.”

I paused. “You can do that?”

She looked at me as if I was an idiot.

“... Maybe later,” I grumbled before turning to my crew on the starboard. “Are all of you ready?” I asked.

“Aye, captain!”

I glanced at the port cannon crews and grimaced. Some had died from the pirate broadside, and even more were injured from wooden shrapnels. The few trained medics were doing their best to keep their friends and coworkers alive.

Turning back to the Baroque Works battleship, I got ready to jump back on but only after we had our broadside.

And as we passed by…

“FIRE!”

The world erupted into black smoke and ear-numbing thunder claps. Then Azula and I jumped through the smoke and across the narrow gap between the two ships.

When I landed on the battleship’s deck along with her, we found ourselves surrounded by pissed-off pirates … and a trio of Baroque Works’ elite officers.

The brawny and pink-haired Miss Monday, crown-wearing and jesting Mr. 9, and none other than the royal infiltrator in disguise, Miss Wednesday.

“Get them!” Mr. 9 shouted at us and their crew charged at us with spears, sabers, and pistols.

Azula was having none of it.

She took a deep breath in and stomped. With a spinning jump, she threw her arms out, and flames roared out from her palms. People screamed as her flames licked and burned away at their clothes and exposed skin.

Miss Monday chose then to try and rush me down.

I took her head on with my axes and swung.

She parried a steel axe with her bare fist and then tried to wrestle me down with her raw strength.

But she wasn’t someone imbued with Thorkell’s strength like I was.

I headbutted her, making her dazed for a second, before kicking her away from me.

Azula decided right then to try to burn the brawler, but Mr. 9 was there with a pair of metal bats. He spun his bats as quickly as he could, and Azula’s flames flared out and around him but couldn’t penetrate the impromptu barrier.

I bashed in a pirate’s head without fully looking at the pirate who tried to sneak up on me. With a grunt, I ran and then tackled Mr. 9 as Miss Monday got up. Mr. 9 saw me coming for a brief moment but was too slow to stop me. He took my tackle head on and tumbled away.

Just as I turned toward Miss Monday to punch her through the main deck, My head snapped to the side as something struck me in the temple.

I growled as I turned to Miss Wednesday, who was right there with her slingshot out and loaded again.

I knew who she saw and how important she was to the timeline of this world.

But fuck if that didn’t hurt!

“Azula!” I shouted instead.

“Don’t tell me what to do, you big lug!” she snapped back at me and threw even more flames around. Though she made it look chaotic, her flames crashed into would-be ambushers and Miss Wednesday with scary accuracy and precision.

Miss Wednesday screamed as she tore her fur coat off and tossed it aside while also backpedaling away from the fire.

I turned back to Miss Monday, and -.

My head snapped backward as I took a punch directly to the face.

I came right back at her with my axe and struck down at her shoulder.

To my surprise, my axe didn’t tear her arm off and instead of stuck in her fucking muscles!

But she went down, screaming and trying to dislodge the axe.

As I raised my second axe to finish her off, someone screamed. “Wait!”

I stopped and turned to Mr. 9.

“What, pirate?”

“Don’t you know who we are?!”

“Of course, I do. Baroque Works. Pirate.”

“We’re a Warlord’s crew!” he shouted but he sounded very desperate.

I raised an eyebrow. “And? You guys might have -”

“They are pirates!” Azula snarled from behind me. “Just kill them already!”

I looked around. I didn’t think that I would encounter these three. Why the two in front of me weren’t as important to the plot as Vivi… they still had a role to play. I didn’t dare to make too much change right now.

“Leave the ships -”

BOOOMM!!!

I looked over my shoulder. It was the first brig that my galleon had unloaded the port broadside into. Obviously, they failed to put out the fire in time.

“Alright, get on your other ship and leave. This ship’s mine. It’s not like you guys have an active bounty anyway.”

“Okay, we will!” Miss Wednesday shouted quickly when it looked like for a second that Miss Monday was about to refuse.

I snorted and pulled the axe out of the brawler’s shoulder, making her scream again in pain. Mr. 9 quickly rushed to Miss Monday’s side, tore off strips from his shirt, and bandaged as shoulder as best as he could while Miss Wednesday nursed what looked like first-degree and some second-degree burn wounds on her forearm.

They and the rest of the surviving pirate crew got off as they and I managed to signal that the fight was over. They boarded their remaining brig and sailed away as my crew jeered and taunted them.

And that was it. We won and now we had our own sea stone-lined battleship.